Pregnant women to be given £3,000 by the government

Mothers-to-be will be given £3,000 by the NHS to choose where and how they give birth – whether it's in a midwife-run unit, a hospital or at home.

Women will be able to use it to pay for anything from one-to-one midwifery to home births, acupuncture, water births and therapies such as self-hypnosis.

The National Maternity Review was set up by NHS England in the aftermath of the inquiry published last year into the failures that led to the deaths of babies at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust. It aims to make care safer and give women more control and greater choice.

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Currently nine in ten of the 660,000births a year take place in hospital, but just one in four says this is where she would want to have a baby. The review, chaired by Conservative peer Baroness Julia Cumberlege, said it had never been safer to give birth in England, but improvements still needed to be made to ensure care was "world class":

"It means you will have a wider range of choices and your choice will be respected and implemented. That gives you more authority over where you manage your pregnancy, birth and postnatal care," she said.

Cathy Warwick, chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives, welcomed the proposals,

"I am delighted that the review's recommendations focus strongly on the need to put women and their individual needs at the centre of care. It is vital that women should be able to make choices that are appropriate for themselves and their family and that care should be provided as close to home as possible by professionals that women can get to know and trust."

The report finds that, despite the recent baby boom and increasing complexity of birth, positive outcomes in maternity services have actually increased in the last decade.The stillbirth and neonatal mortality rate fell by 20% from 2003 to 2013, while maternal morality has reduced from 14 deaths per 100,000 maternities in 2003 to 2005, to nine deaths in 2011 to 2013.

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But some charities fear mothers-to-be could be put under pressure to choose the cheapest birth, rather than the safest. Elizabeth Duff, the senior policy adviser at the National Childbirth Trust, said the scheme "might increase anxiety because (women are) being pushed into a choice they don't understand the consequences of". She added:

"Personal maternity budgets could give women more control over the care they receive during pregnancy, birth and afterwards. However, all women need support and information to understand the maternity options available to them. It's essential they have enough time to talk their decisions through with a health professional and the chance to review plans as their pregnancy progresses."

The scheme will be tested in four areas in 2017, with plans to extend it nationwide in two years.

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